Hindustan Times Review of Legend of Tarzan: “Wonderfully old fashioned Hollywood Epic”

“He’s Tarzan, you are Jane. He will come for you.” There couldn’t have been 10 more perfect words to sum this movie up. And Christoph Waltz, bless his one-trick act, delivers them with just the right amount of smug venom.

What makes a movie, that might on the surface look like it’s just another release date, another intellectual property exploited for its lasting legacy, another grim retelling of a beloved modern hero – transcend every hurdle in its way, and become satisfying, surprising… What makes a film win you over, and become, against all expectations, something you can picture yourself watching again?

It is usually the briefest of moments that turn a film. It can be a petulant glimmer in the eye, a hint of a knowing smile on the edge of the lips, the quiet arrival of a musical theme, or a line of dialogue that you would never hear outside of a movie theatre. Each of these elements converges in that one tingling scene in The Legend of Tarzan.

2 comments

I am from India and I am glad to see that the major Indian publications at least seem to be liking it (Hindustan Times is a pretty big newspaper here). I saw the film on Friday at 4:15 at the most popular multiplex here and it was nearly full. I watched it again on Saturday in the evening and although this was a non-multiplex theater that’s not well known (it doesn’t even have online booking) and yet it was still at least half full. I’m looking at this online ticket booking website and it says here the movie’s received 71% favorable rating from 5k votes. That’s not too surprising as the Indian audience tends to be quite “casual,” even more so than the general/casual audience in the US, and usually they just love everything so long as it’s not too slow and makes for good family viewing. Still, my friend with whom I saw the movie on Friday had no interest in it and he’s one of those really casual fans who doesn’t like slow movies at all (won’t even watch Tarantino films ’cause he thinks they’re too slow), but he said he thought this movie was good and he liked that it was slow in the beginning and established the characters first. That was encouraging for me to hear.

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